“3. Broadsword:
This,” …carnage can be wrought by a low-tech attack in a major urban city”,of course, will never happen because there are 22,000 commonsense gun laws in this country which will prevent it.”
The real first responders should be an armed citizentry. While many, undoubtably, would still be killed in such an attack (even by responding forces blue-on-blue,) they would
1) be highly tactically disruptive to the attackers. Disrupted attack timelines and the potential splitting of supporting pairs, for example, would give the responding police a huge tactical advantage.
2) have at least a fighting chance to survive, especially if they could create defensive “hedgehogs” that the attackers would bypass seeking softer targets.
3) be in a position to immediately augment security forces with trained (and more importantly) vetted personnel, in some kind of “Home Guard” organization, such is found in Denmark.
Instead, our “first responders” to Mumbai-style attack will be stuck in the resulting traffic made indescribably worse by panic, setting up checkpoints and roadblocks, all while attempting to cobble together an on the fly some response. The police, especially in major Eastern cities are miserably trained and underequipped for a Mumbai-type attack (specifically hampered by a lack of rifles and good fire team training, mostly for political “scary guns are icky!” and financial reasons.
Setting up a real “Home Guard” tips too many rice bowls to politically viable, and most Americans are too passive to take more than “glance at the DHS Threat level” approach to security.
Also, don’t think the next Mumbai is going to be guys with SATphones, AKs, and the occasional IED. There are off-the-shelf things they could bring in a rucksack that would cripple the response to their attack. I’m sure their thinking of it now. They learn, we learn. Or at least we should learn.
